


Talking (And Not Talking)

by onelargecoffeepls



Category: The West Wing
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst with a Happy Ending, Episode: s06e13 King Corn, F/M, Josh and Donna finally talking about their feelings we love to see it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-14
Updated: 2021-03-14
Packaged: 2021-03-22 00:40:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,883
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30030369
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/onelargecoffeepls/pseuds/onelargecoffeepls
Summary: "He knows that you have to have a reason to talk to a woman or else you end up looking like an idiot, but it’s Donna and he’s never had a hard time talking with Donna.Until now."Another King Corn AU. Josh knocks, and Donna has some things to say.
Relationships: Josh Lyman/Donna Moss
Comments: 11
Kudos: 82





	Talking (And Not Talking)

**Author's Note:**

> Hi everyone! This came about in a flurry after a friend watched King Corn for the first time, and we realized we both had the exact same expectation for how the episode was going to end (but alas did not). Hope you enjoy!

**Wednesday, January 26, 2005, 12:55 AM**

He’s exhausted. 

He’s slept a combination of ten hours in three days and used up all his remaining energy trying to plaster a smile on his face for Donna. He had to stand up straight and make jokes and put on the ‘Everything’s fine!' show for her when in fact everything is not fine. 

Extraordinarily not fine. 

In fact, it royally sucks. 

But Donna can’t know that because then Russell will know that, and the second Russell knows, it’s over. 

In reality, the campaign is struggling and broke, and he can’t control his candidate no matter how hard he tries. He’s tired and hungry and cold, and he has a headache right behind his eyes that won’t go away no matter how many Tylenol he downs every day, and he misses her. 

Oh my God, does he miss her. 

He reaches up and scratches at his scalp, like Donna is written on his brain in dry-erase marker and he can wipe her from his thoughts as easily as he does polling data and electoral math. 

Like every other plan he has these days, it does not work. 

He looks over at the door. The room is pitch black, with a hole of light coming through from the hallway. On the other side of the door is her door, and for a moment, he imagines her doing the same thing: sitting on the edge of the bed trying to find him through the tiny point of light. 

He hadn’t seen her since New Hampshire, trying to actively avoid any state Russell would be in to cover more ground. That was how they won with Bartlet; be one step ahead in the states you could win instead of fighting like rabid dogs for third place. 

But then he couldn’t escape her. 

She was in the elevator, and then on his floor, and then across from him, and then right up against him as she opened his room. She had changed her perfume since he last saw her, and he hated the way that she wordlessly handed his card back to him. He made the bad jokes in a pathetic attempt to get her to banter with him again, but she didn’t fall for it.

They had never gone this long without talking in the eight years he’s known her. Before, he didn’t even have to try before she would cut into him with her wit and words, and he would retort back, and they were off. Their whole relationship was built off that back-and-forth, all quips and carefully guarded flirting. Just thinking about it made his heart race. 

God, he misses it. Misses her. 

It all becomes far too much for him, and it takes about three seconds for him to leave his room and charge across the hallway. He knocks before he has a chance to stop himself, but the moment he does, he realizes what a truly terrible idea this is. He debates turning tail and heading back into his room, but the lock on the door clicks. 

Donna’s already changed into her pajamas, a faded gray t-shirt and boxer shorts. She’s wrapping a cardigan around her shoulders as she opens the door. 

“Hi.” She says flatly. 

“Hi.” He says back. 

He’s gone farther than originally planned and he’s floundering.

“Did you need something?” She asks, crossing her arms across her chest. 

He’s frozen. He knows that you have to have a reason to talk to a woman or else you end up looking like an idiot, but it’s Donna and he’s never had a hard time talking with Donna. 

Until now. 

“I..uh…” He rocks back and forth on his heels, begging for something, anything to cross his mind. She raises her eyebrows expectantly. 

He looks down at the ground, hoping to find inspiration there. He notices that she’s wearing a pair of thick, familiar gray socks. 

“Are…are those my socks?” He can’t stop the smirk from forming on his face. 

“What?” She looks down. 

“They are!” He laughs. “You stole my socks! I knew I lost a pair somewhere, and you stole them!” 

When she looks back up, her face is hard, but he can see a glint of playfulness in her eyes. 

“I did not steal your socks.” 

“Do you want me to go get their twins and show you? They’re in my suitcase.” 

“Josh…”

“No, I’m serious. When would you have had a chance to steal my socks? The year…2000? I know you took a sweatshirt of mine when you were staying with me back then, but I didn’t take you for a sock thief.” 

“And I gave that back if you remember correctly.” 

“Yeah, like three years later.” 

“Did you need something?” She repeats. She’s starting to sound annoyed, but he can tell she's trying not to smile back. 

For the first time in weeks he feels something other than exhaustion. 

He stares at her for a long second until her grin fades away and he realizes that he was the one who knocked on her door and he needs to make something up now. 

“I…I stepped outside to see if I left anything behind and let the door close behind me.” 

He holds up his room card expectantly. 

He knows it's a terrible lie, but he can’t tell if she does because her eyes dart from his to the card in his hand and she quickly snatches it away. 

“Honestly, you’re going to be living in hotels until August, you really need to learn how to do this yourself.” 

She opens his door in one quick swipe and once again presents it to him without another thought. He thinks about making a quip about how Election Day isn’t until November, but that kind of talk is how she stormed away from him last time.

Instead, he focuses on his gray socks making their appearance years later in Iowa. 

“I still can’t believe you stole my socks.” He turns back to her and gives her a smile. 

“You couldn’t have missed them too much.” She says with a slight sadness in her voice. “You didn’t even try to look for them when you noticed they were gone.” 

She slips back into her own room and shuts the door. 

His face falls, the double-meaning in her words hitting him like a slap to the face. 

He ducks back into his room, tail between his legs, putting out the “do not disturb” sign in shame. He undresses down to his t-shirt and boxes before collapsing into bed. He lies face-first in the pillow, letting the previous moment replay itself about a hundred times before he finally drifts off into a dreamless, fitful sleep. 

______________________________

**Wednesday, January 26, 2005, 10:25 PM**

“Kitchen’s closed.” Josh says, walking back over to the Vinick staffers. “But they said they would whip us up a few eggs, some sandwiches.” 

“Thank you.” The woman says, not looking up from the frantic notes that her and her partner are taking. 

He’s just about to drop his bags when he sees Donna sitting by herself at a small table in the far corner of the room. She’s wearing a thick pink turtleneck and has her hair piled up on top of her head, held in place with one of those large plastic clips that he used to find in her desk drawer. She has papers scattered all over the table and takes small sips from a cup of coffee. 

He flashed back quickly to her biting comment from last night, but brushes it off. She didn’t mean it, he tells himself. He was just overthinking it. 

At least she had talked to him. Talking was always better than whatever they had been doing for the last six weeks. The terrible hallway incident last night was a primer, setting them up for making things right again tonight. 

In any case, it was better than having to make small-talk with Republicans. Especially Republicans who were currently kicking his ass. 

“Excuse me.” He tells them, not taking his eyes off Donna. They don’t even glance up to see him walking away. 

“Hi.” He says shyly approaching her table. She stops working for a moment as she sees him coming towards her. 

“Hi.” She responds in the same flat tone as the previous night. 

They stay that way for a second. He lowers one of his bags to the ground and starts mentally kicking himself for this. If anything, it was worse than last night. Tension hangs between them and he has no clue what to do next.

Luckily, she speaks first. 

“The kitchen is closed if you were wondering.” 

“Yeah, one of the guys in the back said they could put something together for us really fast though.” 

“Good.” 

“Are…is anyone sitting with you? Is Will here?” He points at the empty chair across from her. 

“No, he was going to hit up a vending machine and go to bed. We have an early start again tomorrow.” 

“Right, right. Mind if I…?” 

“Oh sure.” 

He discards his bags along with his coat. She’s still working on something, pencil in hand, making small notes and circles. 

“I wore the socks today.” He says to break the silence. “Y’know, like the ones you stole?” 

“I didn’t steal your socks” She replies, not looking up. 

“Right, right.” 

They go quiet again, and it gnaws away at him. 

“Have you eaten anything?” He asks, lamely. “I got a sandwich and you’re welcome to half, as always.” 

He throws that little bit in at the end as a peace-offering. A nod to the times where his food was her food and she never even asked before taking half his fries or the leftover part of his milkshake. 

She grins to herself, still not looking up at him.

“No thanks. They had stuff waiting for us back on the Russell bus.” 

He groans and rubs his eyes. 

“God, if we had to cater for everyone, we would be living on animal crackers and Slim-Jims at this point.” 

“Really selling the Santos campaign right now. Weren’t you trying to get me to jump ship a few weeks ago?” 

“I still am.” His voice is serious and his sudden change in tone causes her to finally stop working and look at him. 

“Josh.” She says his name like a warning. 

“C’mon Donna.” He starts stepping into dangerous territory. “Any job you want. Right now. Just say the word.” 

She lets out an exasperated sigh and smooths down the top of her hair before looking back down at her papers. 

“We talked about this back in New Hampshire.” 

“About the money thing?” 

She doesn’t say anything but shoots a look at him through her eyelashes. 

Josh scoffs. 

“Donna, you were living out of your car when you joined the Bartlet campaign! Then we found out and made you stay with the Flenders! You didn’t seem to care about which campaign would pay you the most back then.” 

“Well I’m sorry for having different goals than a 24-year-old who just got out of a bad relationship.” She fires back. 

“And that doesn’t even matter!” He ignores her vitriol. “Matt Santos is still ten times the candidate that Bingo Bob is any day of the week.” 

“It does matter when you have bills to pay, Josh, God!” She slams her pencil down on the table, causing him to sit up straight.

“‘Ten times the candidate,’ huh?” Her voice turns icy and deliberate. "Then why did I sit backstage tonight and watch him take the exact same pledge that the Vice President took when we both know that Santos is against it? He’s doing the exact same thing that every other person is doing because they want to win.” 

Josh stays very still. Donna wasn’t the type to get angry like this. They had had arguments and disagreements before, hundreds of them, but she was always the more level-headed of the two. Out of anyone he knew, really.

He notices her taking deep, even breaths, and he lets the air settle before he speaks. 

“Donna?” 

She looks up. All the anger that was in her face a few moments ago is gone. Josh can see now how tired she is. 

“What’s going on?” 

“I’m fine.” She falters a bit on the last word.

“Okay.” He responds, eyeing her carefully. 

“I’m not joining the Santos campaign.” She says after a beat.

“Because of the money?” He breathes out, realizing he had been holding it. 

She goes quiet again and looks away. She picks at the eraser on her pencil with her thumb. 

“Because I don’t want to work for you.” 

It’s a gut punch and he has to laugh to keep from shattering. 

“Didn’t realize you hated working for me that much.” 

“That’s the thing.” Her voice is low and hesitant and she leans to rest her forearms on the table. “I never hated working for you.” 

“Then why—“

“Because of what happened in Germany.” 

It all flashes before his eyes. Walking into the bright lights of the hospital not knowing if she was alive or dead. Seeing her wake up for the first time. The bloody rags and her scrawled handwriting. The sound of his name on her lips. 

“What….what about Germany?” 

“You showed up there.” 

He meets her gaze and notices that they've leaned in quite close to each other. However, she doesn’t move and he doesn’t move and it’s almost enough to make him forget they’re not the only ones in the restaurant. 

“And that’s why you don’t want to work for me again?” He asks with a smirk. “Because I cared enough to drop everything and make sure you didn’t die on a job I sent you on?” 

“Yes.” She says bluntly, cutting through his facade.

His smile drops. 

“Josh, we’ve spent the better part of a decade with each other.” She continues. “We know each other better than most, and probably spent more hours together than some married couples. 

“The actual duties of my job weren't great, but it meant that I got to be with you, and I stayed around all those years because of that.” 

She pauses for a moment to gauge his reaction. He can feel his heart hammering away in his chest. He has a terrible poker face, and he knows that he probably looks like he's going to stroke-out at any second, but she keeps going.

“And when I woke up in that hospital in Germany, and you had come all that way, and I thought…I thought there was something.” 

She looks down at her hands. 

“I mean…When I was in the operating room, you were the last person I wanted to see just in case I didn’t wake up.” 

She meets his eyes again with a sad smile.

“Did you…Did you also think there was something?” 

He can feel her anxiety radiating across the table, but he remains quiet. Her heart is currently in his hands and he has no idea what to do with it. 

It was a delicate topic that they never dared approach. The first time that he even allowed himself to question his feelings for her was on that plane to Germany. As much as he feigned ignorance to Amy and Joey and Colin, he knew something was there, hovering just below the surface. He poked at it for a while on the plane, lingering on memories of twisted ankles and red lights, of her standing in the snow looking more beautiful than he had ever seen her, of the days where he would hear her laughing coming into the bullpen in the morning and his mood would instantly brighten. He imagined a world without all that, and it nearly broke him in half.

She pulls back when he doesn't respond. 

“Okay fine. Forget I said anything. The sleep-deprivation is clearly making me lose my mind, and I think we might be better off if we never speak again.” 

She starts to stand, but he reaches out and grabs her by the wrist, stopping her in her tracks. 

He swallows thickly. 

“I….I thought there was something too.”

Confessing feels like a weight has been lifted off his chest. Her eyes go wide as he releases her arm. She returns to her seat very slowly and they don’t break eye-contact. The thin barrier that they've held up for years shatters, leaving them both squarely in new territory. 

“Then why didn’t you do anything about it?” She asks, visibly shaken. 

He exhales hard at her question and runs a hand through his hair. 

“I don’t know.” His voice is barely above a whisper. “I don’t know.” 

“But even when I got back, I expected something to be different, for you to at least acknowledge what happened, but you didn’t even try. You pushed around my wheelchair, but at the end of the day, it was like I had never left.” 

She starts speaking louder and with more desperation, the words tumbling out after being kept in for so long. Her bottom lip quivers. 

“I was in a lot of pain, Josh. I needed you to be there for me. You were my best friend, and I really needed you, but you didn’t do anything, why didn’t you do anything?” 

“I don’t know!” He raises his voice more than is appropriate for the hour and the location and he takes a quick glance around him before turning back to her. 

“Fear, mostly? Propriety? The Irishman in the corner? I don’t know.” 

They sit for a long moment not speaking, not moving, until he finally realizes the only thing he can say. 

“I’m sorry, Donna. I really am. I knew it was different, and I should have done something.” 

The corner of her mouth twitches. She starts stacking the papers together and gathering her things. 

“I think I should go.” 

“No no no, Donna wait.” He leans far across the table trying to reach for her again. “Wait just a little bit longer. I’m sorry, we can talk this out more, we—“ 

“Josh, I’m exhausted, and this is honestly the last thing I ever wanted to talk about with anyone, let alone you.” 

“Just give me five minutes. I want to make things better.” He pleads. 

“I don’t think talking makes it any better, do you? I’ll see you around.” 

She quickly picks up her bags and drapes her coat over her arm before turning to leave. Josh sits with a hand over his mouth trying to think of anything he can say to make her stay. 

She takes a couple of steps before stopping. 

“Do you know what the worst part of it is?” She asks over her shoulder. 

“I miss you. Despite all of it, I still really miss you.” 

She turns back and walks out, leaving Josh frozen to his seat. 

______________________________

**Wednesday, January 26, 11:05 PM**

If he didn’t hate this hallway yesterday, he really hates it now. His bags feel like they weigh a thousand pounds each as he trudges back towards his room. The bad country-western radio blares on in a never-ending assault on his ears, and the harsh fluorescent lights only make his headache worse. 

After Donna left, Josh had seen the Congressman and Ronna alone again at their table, and walked over in a daze to join them. His head was spinning and he hoped that maybe they could distract him. 

He climbed into the booth, seeing that the cook had brought out a sandwich for him God-knows how long ago. It felt like years had passed since he ordered it. 

However, the second he sat down, he was immediately questioned about what he was talking about for so long with “the blonde from the Russell campaign,” and Josh was left squabbling trying to change the subject. 

The Congressman slinked off to bed not long after, and Josh could tell that he was pissed at him. Ronna mentioned something about the ethanol pledge and Senator Vinick’s response as she slid out of her seat, leaving Josh alone. 

He snubbed his hands through his hair again, silently praying that he wouldn’t come out of this looking more like Toby than he otherwise would. His anxiety quickly zapped him of any appetite, so he grabbed his things and left his dinner cold on the table. 

He’s somehow more tired than he was yesterday, every conversation he had with the Congressman, Mrs. Santos, Donna all playing in his head in a terrible loop. He’s almost home-free when he sees her opening her door and grabbing the thick packet off the floor. She’s wearing different pajamas tonight and catches the blue of her shirt-sleeve before it disappears back into her room. 

Her words echo in his ears with each step. 

_‘I thought there was something.’_

_‘You didn’t even try.’_

_‘You were my best friend.’_

_‘I miss you.’_

He stands in front of his door for a moment, letting each line cut into him over and over again. He half-turns.

Knocking on her door would be something. Knocking would be trying. 

But then what? 

Does he try to talk to her? Apologize again but better this time? 

He can’t find a good answer to that so he pushes in the key card, and miracle of miracles, it opens on the first try. 

He throws his things on the floor, and runs a hand across his face. 

_‘I miss you.’_

He misses her too. 

_‘I miss you.’_

Go talk to her. 

_‘I miss you.’_

But what’s left to be said? 

_‘I miss you.’_

He runs from his room, across the hall, and knocks on Donna’s door with three loud bangs. 

She opens it quickly, as if she was waiting just inside, and has a wide-eyed expression. 

“Josh,” she says softly, “Please, I really don’t want to talk anymore.” 

“Me neither.” 

And he leans in and kisses her hard on the mouth. 

She tastes like toothpaste, and his hands grip her waist. For the first time in months, his mind is clear, and he can only focus on how soft her shirt feels and the way her lips part along with his. 

She reacts instantly by reaching a hand up into his hair and using the other to pull him in closer by front of his jacket. He takes a step forward, pushing her back into the dark of her room.

The door slams shut, the sound echoing briefly through the hallway before it disappears into another country-western song. 

______________________________

**Thursday, January 27, 5:46 AM**

He wakes up to the phone ringing. 

He lets it go for a couple of cycles before he rolls over to his left side and picks it up. 

“Hello?” He groans into the receiver. 

“This is your 5:45 AM wake up call.” Drones the robotic voice on the other end. 

Josh mumbles his thanks and puts the phone back in its cradle. 

He turns back over and wraps his arm around Donna’s waist. She faces away from him so he buries his face in her hair as her fingers come up to cradle his elbow. 

They don’t say a word, and for once, he’s okay with it.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! I'm on Tumblr at the same username if you want to say hi!


End file.
